We just got a batch of new cd-r's from a new label called Seedy R!, a sub label of the already kick ass PsuedoArcana label run by Antony Milton. The Van The Van, reviewed elsewhere on this list, and this curiously titled disc.
Organorganorganorgan is exactly what you might imagine, 4 organs. Played by Sam Hamilton, Stefan Neville, Campbell Kneale and Antony Milton. Recorded live at a NZ art gallery, these chaps plugged in their fan driven chord organs, and proceeded to unfurl an expansive tapestry of whirs and warbles and wheezes, rich and dense. Slow shifting layers of epic warm sound. A half hour of thick slithery shimmery drone, wreathed in a cloud of subtle overtones and muted melody. So nice. Palestine, Sunroof!, Nitsch, Gurdjieff, and other masters of the extended organ drone... you get the idea.
Packaged in a brown paper sleeve, with a hand stamped 'R' on one side, and a killer psychedelic illustration of four madmen wildly abusing their .. ahem.. organs, on the other.
Amen is the second in a trilogy of works from Organum, the ongoing project of arcane drones from British artist David Jackman. While Jackman's previous work with Organum has focused upon extended glissandos from bowed cymbals swarming into huge choruses of acoustic cacophony to amazing affect, this trilogy has more in common with the minimalist agendas of Philip Glass and Brian Eno. The structure of the piece is a simple drone from a Hammond organ gaping towards infinity, furthered by repeating a sample of a monastic chant whose cathedral reverb renders any actual words indecipherable. Solitary strikes upon a tower bell and sparse chords from a piano also make their mark upon the plastic ambience. As with the first installment to this trilogy, Jackman offers two almost identical variations of the same score to flush out the 40 minutes of sound on this album. While clocking in at a considerably greater length than most Organum recordings, this trilogy pales in comparison to the strongest Organum work, best experienced in Volume One and Volume Two, both released on Robot.
Quite limited, we warn you -- we were only able to get a dozen...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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The dense acoustic scrapes & drones recorded in richly sonorous environments (cavernous warehouses, freeway overpasses, waterducts, etc.) appear much more orchestrated here on 'Birds' Wings...' than on the previous Organum records. Solid fragments of bowed cymbals and clattering metal have been mapped out strategically against the hypnotic austerity of droning quitars and bowed steel wires. Along with the mastermind of the project David Jackman, Organum's line up includes Robert Hampson (Main / Loop), Michael Prime (Morphogenesis), Emma O'Bong, and Mat Fox. Both Jim and Byram give the thumbs up on this one!
Despite his development as an artist within the heyday of the British post-industrial community of Nurse With Wound, Whitehouse, and The New Blockaders, David Jackman's musical beginnings date back much earlier to the nascent stages of British improv. In fact, Jackman's earliest recordings were made within Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra and a couple of late '60s projects spearheaded by Eddie Prevost of AMM; but it wasn't until much later that he actually released anything he conceptualized. Up until about five years ago, it was pretty safe to say that most everything Jackman touched turned to sonic gold. The signature Organum sound is an aggressively droning acoustic screech, typically created by bowing cymbols and multi-tracking the results with little or no processing. Nowadays, artists like Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof, and Birchville Cat Motel owe their entire sound to Organum; and it's hard to find instances when the students have outclassed the teacher. The main problem with Organum and Jackman is his insistance upon very short programs... such as this 18 minute 3". It's fucking beautiful; but would it really damage Jackman's curmudgeonly mystique to actually compile a full 70 minute album?
Anyway, the four tracks found on Die Hennen Zahne date back to the early '80s, with the first cut "Die Kralle" pre-dating the earliest Organum work, when Jackman was multi-tracking metallic hammerings and primative sampled loops of scraping noise. The title track explodes with a constant tumble of crashing glass and Tibetan horn blurts. At merely four minutes long, Jackman's controlled fury is no match for those epic blasts of cacophony heard on Sub Rosa's amazing collection of Tibetan Buddhist rites, but it is nice to actually hear a rare influence intrude into the Organum repertoire. "Maus" is the centerpiece of the album, beautifully encapsulating everything that Jackman does so well. Bowed cymbols set in a complex polyphony of static reverberation and shimmering metallic vibrato. Excellent! The final track is a quieter bit of 'pipe fighting' between Jackman, Michael Prime, and Emma O'Bong, much like the Organum curiousity Vacant Lights. Even if it is a bit short, Die Hennen Zahne is well worth diving into.
Justifying the price of $13.98 for a seven inch with 8 minutes of music can be difficult. David Jackman continues to release tiny editions of his music in bite sized portions. Obviously, he's banking on the fact that both his solo work and his project Organum is fascinating enough to entice his loyal customer base to gobble up anything that he releases. "Die Letzte Musik Vor Dem Krieg" is the latest from Organum, a project that specializes in the timbres and drones from bowed and scraped metals. Jackman, who appears to be the only member of this permutation of Organum, has always been a master of this artform, collaging multiple layers of these sounds on top of each other to create a swarming minimalism that's almost always better than anything that Tony Conrad or LaMonte Young could muster. Jackman mixes things up a bit, by throwing in a couple of solemn piano notes on one track, and mournful Tibetan horns on the other. Being pressed at 45 rpm, this single sounds great at slower speeds, thus balancing out the dollars per minute ratio a bit more.
Be warned, we only have 5 copies of this, and these will be gone soon. Don't delay, or you may end up spending $25.00 on Ebay for a copy. And you know what, it's probably worth it!
The 2 three and a half minute tracks on Ein Schwarzeres Schwarz represent the source material that Z'ev used to mix the exquisite collaborative record Tinnitus VU. Jackman offers a stately cluster of piano chords which he repeats every 30 seconds or so with the sustain pedal firmly depressed. Behind this arrangement, very subtle drones flutter in the distant. Limited edition to 500 copies with the artwork being simple spot varnish lettering on a white cover.
It is quite plausible to propose that Organum is one of the many logical extentions of '60s minimalism. After all, Organum's David Jackman has maintained a longstanding friendship with AMM (whose Eddie Prevost joined Organum for a couple of records) and wrote
Sonically, this stands as maybe the finest work from Organum. The extended screech of bowed cymbals fits perfectly with non-verbal deep vocal chants and the hovering wisps of a flute to create a timeless and ancient sounding music. As soon as Organum sastisfactorily meets the requirements for the drone supreme with complex interlocking timbres from various tones and abrasions, Jackman orders everything to cease. The shortened program of these beautiful sounds appears as a let down at first, but Jackman's fleeting constructions say everything that needs to be said with all of economy of a three minute pop song. If you disagree, the digital format will work in your advantage as you can simply repeat this album indefinitely for extended listens. Regardless, this is highly recommended!!!
Omega is the final installment in a series of releases from Organum that vaguely deals with the notions of holiness. Like Sanctus and Amen before it, Omega is a composition for Hammond organ, gong, and tower bell, with the addition of a droning sitar replacing the monastic chants found on Amen. And again, the compositional structure is a simple drone from a Hammond organ gaping towards infinity, with the gongs and tower bells struck for dramatic punctuations. The raga-drone from the sitar is a nice touch, slanting Organum's gaze upon spirituality toward the East. Omega may be the most interesting piece in this trilogy and may even appeal to those fans of Aidan Baker's ambient atmospherics; but it has to be said that Organum's best work is not found here. For that, look to the Organum albums (e.g. Vacant Lights, Ikon, Sphyx, etc.) from the late '80s and early '90s, which continue to slip in and out of print.
Up until recently, David Jackman has appeared to be more interested in digging through his archives to release albums of his classic material from the '80s, rather than working on new material. However, he's been slowly increasing his activities thanks to a couple of recent collaborations with Z'ev. Sanctus stands as the first proper full length album from Organum in nearly a decade. So for those of you who have been holding out for Jackman to finally release a full 45 minute recording, here it is! Jackman declared that this album is a variation on a theme, having composed four discrete parts from a single graphic score for grand piano, Hammond organ, tower bell, and gong. Despite these very specific acoustic elements (and claims to the contrary), the four pieces of Sanctus sound much more synthetic and plastic in nature, perhaps due to the excess of processing. As always, the Organum sound is turbulant and static at the same time, emerging as a slow motion expanse of dynamic drones. Due to the synthetic appearance of his sounds, Jackman comes across as much more Eno and much less, well, Organum.
For the "Sphyx" sessions which evolved over a three year period from 1990 - 1993, David Jackman amassed an all-star line-up for his stellar drone ensemble Organum with a young Jim O'Rourke (freshly matriculated from Illusion of Safety), Christoph Heemann (HNAS, Mirror), Eddie Prevost (AMM), Dinah Jane Rowe, and post-production help from Robert Hampson (Main). The Organum templates for glittering cascades of scraped metal, bowed cymbals, and steel strung cellos with occasional flourishes from Jackman's shakuhachi (i.e. a Japanese flute) remain intact. While certainly attentive towards the shifts within the limited palette from coarse metals, Organum specializes in the density of those acoustic textures layering, swelling, and mutating upon themselves.
However, the extended track 'Aurora' prominently features Eddie Prevost skittering across the drum kit punctuating the glistening textural drone with a rhythmic patter often found on the mid-period AMM recordings. For the CD reissue of this long out of print LP, "Sphyx" features two bonus tracks recorded around the same time. Unfortunately, this too has a limited run, with only 700 copies of the digipack CD available. As with all of the Organum albums, this comes highly recommended!
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This isn't anything new, though we have picked up a bunch of this Organum record not only because it is fantastic but also to give further insight into the earliest drone work from AQ-favorite Andrew Chalk (who also has been quite active in Mirror and the recently defunct Ora). While Chalk kept his residency in Organum for only a few records, his presence added patience and delicacy to Organum's textural actions for bowed cymbals, motorized vibrations, and scraped metal. With his lengthy tonalities from sampled bells and field recordings of birds, Chalk made an excellent addition to Organum's collective which for "Submission" includes the curmugeonly ringleader David Jackman, Dinah Jane Rowe (no relation to AMM's Keith Rowe), and Nurse With Wound's Stephen Stapleton on the production knobs. This incarnation of Organum provides the most elegant ensemble that Jackman has been able to arrange - with his own breathy flutes and aerated wisps of sound bathed in a glistening reverberation and surrounded by the complex textures of the aforementioned scraped / bowed metals. "Submission" was originally released on vinyl for United Dairies in 1988 and in 1994 Illusion of Safety's Dan Burke reissued it on his Complacency label.
Legend has it that Organum recorded Vacant Lights in less than an hour, yet the cover art took Organum's frontman David Jackman over six months to complete. While Vacant Lights has finally been reissued after its original publication back in 1988, the artwork that Jackman toiled over is nowhere to be found. But we do get the music, a text-book definition of what Andee would describe as a pipe fight, in which the sonic pugilists arm themselves with chains, glass bottles, pipes, a chainlink fence, or any other object that you might find in an abandoned lot or junkyard. Then for the course of an hour (or however long is necessary), the participants drag, scrape, and toss those objects around, building the composition either after the fact or purely along improvisational lines. While contemporary improv ensembles occasionally tinker with the pipe fight strategy with little or no success, Organum's Vacant Lights excels simply because all four members (Jackman, Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton, Dinah Jane Rowe, and Peter McGhee) are so intent upon listening to each other. While the other three quietly rattle and clink their objects, Jackman stoically plays his Japanese flute which interweaves gently with the environmental sounds of trucks passing by. As the interplay between all of the elements is so subtle, Vacant Lights often appears as a quizzical field recording. It's nonetheless magnificent.
Disc two of this reissue campaign contains the Rara Avis single, which fits much more closely to the archetypal Organum sound of bowed metals, scraped gongs, and complex timbral dronings from acoustic sources. Die Stadt could have easily lumped all of this material onto one disc. Well it's still a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to get the original on eBay.
We've long championed the works of David Jackman's Organum, a long running drone project, whose modern take on classic minimalism, a gorgeous assemblage of bowed metals and collaged layered dronescapes, has managed to far surpass any of his/their contemporaries in terms of quality, originality, and sheer vision.
While most of the Organum records do in fact share sonic similarities, each one is most definitely its own sonic universe, a fantastic(al) piece of musical art, that manages to soothe and entrance, yet still challenge and engage, as is the case with Valentin, the first Organum vinyl release in 7 years, a single track spread out over two sides of a 7", at 45 rpm of course, so like past Organum 7"s, this is about quality more than quantity, a bit pricey perhaps for just a brief glimpse into Jackman's unique soundworld, but as always well worth it.
Valentin begins with a whir of what sounds like rainfall, a soft sheen of hushed white noise, punctuated by the occasional piano chord, minor key, ringing out mysteriously, soon joined by the clatter of crashing metals and shattering glass, those sounds are spaced out, letting that swirling hissing ambience drift and hover, before voices surface, a choir, a lovely chorale buried in the blurred background. There are some rumbling scrapes, some distant creaks, and while the sound seems to evolve over the course of the two sides, it also sounds looped, cyclical and mesmeric, the various sounds, recurring, perhaps subtly altered each time, perhaps not, the result though, how ever brief, is a gorgeous sprawl of haunting, elegiac, abstract minimalism. So fantastic.
LIMITED TO 233 COPIES, pressed on ultra thick vinyl, housed in a heavy matte picture sleeve, with a printed cardstock insert, each one hand numbered.
FINALLY REISSUED!!! While it's always a pleasure to listen the classic recordings of Organum, I've resigned myself to the possibility that David Jackman has quietly ceased all of his current musical operations and has been merely reissuing much of the huge back catalogue of his solo work and Organum from the '80s (what no Monoplane?). "Volume One" was one of the first documents of the Jackman / Organum reissues, collecting material from "Rasa" (originally produced as a split with Nurse With Wound on United Dairies) and the L.A.Y.L.AH. anti-records "Tower of Silence" and "In Extemis." Like everything else Jackman released, "Volume One" quickly went out of print and began fetching hefty sums on eBay. Fortunately, this has come back into print (but probably not for long); so those without a disposable income can afford to hear the wonderful paradox that is Organum.
The timeless, acoustic drones that make up the music of Organum could have been made for the beginning of the world or for its final breath; yet Jackman has always avoided assigning any specific metaphors to his work. Instead, this is music that attempts to exist purely within its own context, unconcerned with anything beyond its self-defined borders. Grinding motorcycle engines, steel strung instruments, bowed metal, and Japanese flutes are the instruments that continuously re-appear throughout Organum's recordings. However grim, Industrial, grating, dissonant, or punishing Organum could be with such instrumentations, Jackman always manages to arrange his work to emphasize the dynamic and often beautiful tonalities of those sounds. For those fans of Mirror, Andrew Chalk, Birchville Cat Motel, Oren Ambarchi, and other drone obssessed composers, Organum's recordings are required listening.
FINALLY REISSUED!!! Just like "Volume One," Robot Records has discarded David Jackman's mandala-like collages of medical clip-art as well as any pertinent information in favor of an all black package, with the tracklisting printed on the cd itself. Fronted by the curmudgeonly Jackman (who previously worked with Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra, Nurse With Wound, and members of AMM), Organum has been an unwavering vehicle to compose unsettling drones out of the dynamic timbres of metallic scrapings. As heard on the first track "Valley Of Worms" - a collaboration with The New Blockaders from the Organum album "In Extremis" Organum's sound is a monstrous howl of dissonant acoustic noises, chugging Kawasaki motorcycle engines (!!!), and abrasive textural overlayering; yet upon the following tracks "Horii" (originally released on L.A.Y.L.A.H. and featuring noted Organum graduate Andrew Chalk), and "Ich Reiste Weit Und Verweilte Fur Einigezeit In Tring" (an unreleased track from 1989), Jackman's symphonies of noise begin to harmonize into a eerily beautiful drone. Very highly recommended work that probably won't stay in print for much longer in spite of the repressing!
Again, Organum and The New Blockaders have released archival recordings without providing any information about those recordings. Fortunately, we here at Aquarius can subvert the two outfits' willful mysteriousness by providing a bit of information to go along
When collaborating with the Rupenus Brothers (aka The New Blockaders), David Jackman (the ringleader for Organum) hedges for a punishingly abrasive tone to come from his arsenal of scraping metal and growling motors. The "Pulp" ep is no exception with multiple hand-grinders abusing piles of scrap metal. Yet, behind this noise, Organum and The New Blockaders offer a strangely calm organ sound that drones noxiously like the late-period, carcinogenic work of MB. "Wrack" find the two ensembles again grinding away at another pile of metal, but with Jackman's Kawasaki motorcycle humming in the background. I'm not kidding. "Raze" finds all of the textural grit collapsing into a blur of white noise. Still quite nervous in its construction. There is also a track given the unfortunate title of "No Title" that rounds out this album. Since Jackman has five or six releases with this name, it's hard to say what this is, exactly. Nevertheless, it fits within the harsh acoustic noise that Organum and The New Blockaders are masters in creating.
Originally released as a cassette in 1984, "Salute" is an early collaboration between David Jackman (Organum's mastermind) and the Rupenus brothers (who outside of the anti-art noise in the New Blockaders, are also known as Masshitshaddu, Metgumbnerbone, Bladder Flask, Mixed Band Philanthropist, and probably a few other projects of esoteric hermeticism). While these two entities have crossed paths on a number of occassions (most notably being their speaker damaging noise collaboration "Symphony in X"), "Salute" makes for quite a listenable album, albeit one full of nervous claustrophobia. The tense analogue vibrations that buzzes incessantly with a flanged clatter of scraping/creaking metal put "Salute" in close proximity to the high-end squeal of Whitehouse, but fortunately without the embarrassing vocals. Most everything that Jackman touches is certainly worth listening to, and this is no exception.
It's been far too long since Organum (or the ensemble's mastermind David Jackman for that matter) released a proper full album. Instead, we've encountered a steady stream of short program EPs and seven inch singles, which is becoming an unfortunate tease, as Organum's work, with their beautifully sustained drones, mesmeric timbral interplay, and transcendent minimalism really requires extended durations for the Organum aesthetic to articulate itself. I would imagine that Jackman wants the audience to work for those ecstatic epiphanies that are potentially present throughout his entire catalogue. If this is in fact true, then I must resign myself to the fact that Organum records are going to continue to shorten, condense, and shrink.
Tinnitus VU finds Jackman taking up the Organum moniker once again, but this time he's collaborating with the shamanistic percussionist Z'ev. As one could expect, Mr. Jackman is not an easy man to find; and, even a man as esteemed and talented as Z'ev had to put considerable efforts into contacting Jackman, much less arranging a studio session to record. When the two finally got together, they bowed gongs and prepared wire instruments, scraped large pieces of metal together, and dragged heavy wooden objects across the studio floor. Alongside these archetypal actions for the two artists, they also decided upon a series of gentle piano chords. When Z'ev got a hold of those recordings and began to render a number of digital treatments of the source material, this 18 minute EP began to blossom. The piano only serves as a punctuation to the timbral explorations which emerge at first as shimmering drones of densely layered metallic dissonance and later, as an ocean of tumultous rumbles. Even with the digital sheen that Z'ev grafts upon the Organum sound, Tinnitus VU is an immaculate document.
We have sung the praises of many a David Jackman record, including both his solo projects and his epochal drone project Organum; yet, Jackman doesn't make it easy for us to like him. In recent years, he has only released hyper limited edition 7"s and 10"s with a paltry amount of sound on each, and usually with a pretty hefty price tag. Even the cd reissues are a bit frustrating, for instance the Vacant Lights / Rasa Avis was inexplicably released as a double cd when a single disc was more than adequate to house all of the material. Yet, Tocsin -- which is the second collaborative recording between avant-percussionist Z'ev and Organum -- is a much meatier release with almost 50 minutes of soundsculpting. In all likelihood, Z'ev is the one we have to thank for the longer program of Organum's music. The source material for Tocsin came from a single studio session in which Z'ev bowed and scraped the surfaces of an unspecified steel instrument, and Jackman sat behind a piano offering sparse clusters of sound. Afterwards, the two went their separate ways to further process the recordings. Z'ev's material focuses on the sustained metallic klang of that steel instrument; and while the resonances of those scrapes are quite similar to Jackman's quintessential albums like Ikon and Sphyx, his production sensibility places a much greater emphasis upon digital signal processing over Jackman's very dry sound. When it comes to Jackman's take on the material, he unsurprisingly concentrates on his piano clusters, with Z'ev's scrapes relegated to the background.
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AMAZING! Sounds like experimental electronic or ambient beauty, yet it's done completely on mouth organs in Bangladesh. The Murung people are an isolated society from a densely forested region of Bangladesh. Just as their religion has remained a type of spirit worship, Murung's ritualist music has developed independently from the rest of the world. It is a hypnotic cyclical music which has preceded the minimalism of Terry Riley and Steve Reich (but done much better!!!) by eons. The Murung perform their songs on 'plung' - mouth organs built of gourds punctured by bamboo and reeds resulting in eerie sustained trills. It may be an irrelavent point, but during these rituals, the Murung get pretty drunk on rice beer - yet remain calm, mirroring the methodic pulse of the ecstatic sounds emanating from their mouth organs. An excellent documentation. Anyone who enjoyed the compilation of music by the Ede people of Vietnam which was one of our 'records of the month' back in February should check this out too!
Huzzah! Another middle-eastern pop-psych gem! Like the John Berberian lps we featured last list, The Orient Express released their sole record on the Mainstream label in 1969. Played on electric versions of sitar. oud, melodica, and minitar, this trio comprised of French and Iranian musicians with deft skills of traditional instruments create an engaging fusion of east-west grooves. A little more than a third of the songs have vocals either in Arabic or English. Not as heavy as The Devil's Anvil, but more psych than the Berberian lps, these spellbinding pieces weave sitar funk and eastern pop like a sublime melding of Mogollar and The Byrds. The English songs may sound a tad naive at first, but there's not that many of them and on repeated listens have really endeared themselves to us. So Awesome!
Dreamy rare psych-folk from Norway 1970. Gentle, lilting female and male vocals singing through gauzy Eastern-inflected arrangements of sitars and flutes. There is a nice transported quality to the songs as they seemingly take you through imagined mythic geographies. The perfect soundtrack to float down the Nile in a boat made of reeds, or to prepare virgins for tribal sacrifices to erupting volcanoes.
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Dan Wu's personal musings on Asian American-ness filtered through media, movies, and music. Film, music, and periodical reviews (including a full page on Genghis Blues), plus an interview with AQ's very own Windy Chien and also Mike Park of Skankin Pickle/Asian Man Records.
A beautiful live document from the msyterious Origami Galaktika. Four extended tracks mixed into one 36 minute seamless whole. A rich, dense, lush, organic assemblege of ambient drones and droning ambience. Distant fog horn moans, chimes blowing in the wind, rumbling glitch flecked hum, getting more and more ambient, until scratchy white noise fuzz adds the sound of rain beating on a roof or a distant steam engine sort of thrum to the proceedings, that eventually morph into a sort of bass driven groove, albeit a super minimal and subtly pulsing one, with the sounds of occasional passing trains and other found sounds. So nice.
What is it with Garm from Ulver (who runs the Jester label)? He just seems dead set on alienating everybody. I mean Garm and Ulver defined black metal for a while, even going so far as to record a record IN THE FOREST! Then they released an experimental double
Intense death metal/grindcore from a new band featuring ex-members of Angelcorpse and Cephalic Carnage. Brutal grind with an outer space obsession. Really great.
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An Atom (Heart) project here, with a cool Talking Heads cover, of "Burning Down The House"!
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Even though I know it's sacrilege to suggest that there are records somehwere in the vicinity of being as good as Gram Parsons two solo records, I'm a'gonna go out on a limb and say that if you are a fan of Gram and Emmylou, you really oughta hear the Original Harmony Ridge Creek Dippers.
Since 1997, Victoria Williams, Mark Olson (of the wonderful alt.country group Jayhawks), and Razz Russell have been living in Joshua Tree (scaring up Gram's ghost, no doubt) and selfreleasing their own music on their own label. Recording as the Harmony Ridge Creek Dippers, they've crafted a delicate, sunbaked country rock sound complete with perfectly-written songs (that tell stories, hey!), shuffling twang, and AMAZING harmonies (imagine the break-yr-heart chord changes Jayhawks were famous for, alongside Victoria's completely unique voice). The sound is augmented with "juice" harp, mandolin, and pedal steel, and guests include John Convertino of Calexico and some guy from the Black Crowes. The Creek Dippers actually sound a lot like you'd expect them to, which is a VERY good thing.
We HIGHLY recommend ALL of the Creekdippers releases, especially for fans of Victoria Williams who've been wondering what she's been up to, and for fans of the Jayhawks (cos these are the first appearances of Mark Olson since leaving Jayhawks). The selftitled one came out first (1997), Pacific Coast Rambler is the second (1998), and Zola and the Tulip Tree is the new one. Each is 12.98 and we have all of them in stock.
As we've mentioned in other reviews, we're kind of obsessed with Chinese black metal. We've done our best to track down all we could, but so far that's only been three bands, Be Persecuted, Ululate (who we have yet to review on the list), and these guys, er, well, this guy, name of Evil Soul, who makes music as Original Sin. The last Original Sin record was raw and primitive and intense and furious, tons of buzz all wrapped around some seriously relentless black metal.
But here, Evil Soul seems much more contemplative, at least on album opener "Silence Before Death", in fact not only is it midtempo, but there are lots of clean guitars, and drifty keyboards, the sound is distinctly lo-fi, very brittle and barren, with the harsh vox and buzzing guitar hovering at right about the same frequency, this is some serious tweeter metal, all hiss and whir, but man is it weirdly sad and pretty, moody slowly unfurling minor key guitars, those distinctly Burzumic keyboards, plinking out a strange melancholic melody, with the occasional little burst of frenzied double bass, the end of the song gets a bit more aggro, but the timbre of the sound is so odd, that even at it's heaviest it seems to flutter dreamily, albeit wreathed in buzz and blackness.
The second track follows suit, not nearly as trebly, but still loping and sorrowful, with flute like melodies draped over a waltzy rhythm, the black metal more washed out and melancholic that grim and buzzy.
The rest of the tracks drift from super spare skeletal clean guitar, to almost choral dirges, with woozy swirling vocals, and warbly whirring riffage, to galloping triumphant crunch to hushed almost post rock sounding reverbed guitarscape to the closer, which might be the heaviest of the bunch, but even then, it's laced with New Agey keyboards, and melodies so bittersweet, that the blackness and buzz is transformed into something much dreamier. Of course there are stretches of harsh vox and more intensive buzz, but those parts to hover over swirling synthscapes, the result being that no matter ho fierce or fast or heavy the songs get, they remain, pretty and haunting, and thus quite unique.
Ever since we discovered the band Be Persecuted, we've become just a little but obsessed with Chinese black metal bands, of which there are precious few. The Encyclopedia Metallum which typically lists hundreds of bands for most countries, only has 95 Chinese bands, of which we've heard of only three. Be Persecuted, Ululate, and now, Original Sin. Original Sin is one guy, named Evil Soul appropriately enough, and Misanthropic is his only record, released last year, and holy shit is it a killer.
Raw and furious, intense and totally blown out, with a buzz that rivals even the buzziest of BM hordes. Nothing too freaked out or fucked up, just totally grim, blackened classic Norwegian style black metal. But it's a sound we can't get enough of. Sometimes we miss that fuzz drenched buzz, the sort of black metal that manages to be ultra heavy and evil, but weirdly soothing and trancelike at the same time. And Original Sin has that down, blasting maniacally, the buzz so invasive that the songs almost becomes pure dronemusic, and there are plenty of breakdowns, where the guitar picks out a super sad melodies and the buzz becomes like a warm blanket of sound, so sorrowful and melancholy. There's even a cover of Burzum's "Lost Wisdom" which is pretty true to the original, and if anything adds more buzz to the mix, some serious squalls of stuttery drum machine, and way more tortured vocals. The final track, the nearly 11 minute "Original Sin" flits back and forth between loping Burzumic buzz and lightning speed blasts, with some haunting breakdowns with chantlike clean vocals over softly shimmering minor key guitar buzz.
The one thing we noticed songwise, was there were three tracks whose titles related to "The City": there's "The Black Cloud Upon The City", "Be Disgusted With The City" and "The Elegy Of The City", not sure if they're about the town the band hails from or something more abstract, but pretty interesting nonetheless.
Way recommended for those in need of some serious grim buzz or some tranced out minor key blackness.
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"On the surface Orion Rigel Dommisse's song world is marked by death, desolation and personal disaster. That the events populate a fairy-tale-like terrain is no small point. The transmutation of terror and dread into a manageable folkloric currency makes complete sense given the fantastic elements sewn within Orion's singular visions. As with the best fantasy tales, Orion's songs thread multiple meanings, some obvious, others occluded, through a linear narrative of disarming depth. All the while the tone is charged, with menace and beauty. This is classical music set to Lucio Fulci's The Beyond, folk music from some lost Balkan province where moonlight feeds all need for Vitamin D. Orion's text is a dark, rich blood that oozes through organs, infusing them with all manner of unearthy metastices; mutations which allow them to evolve through pain, survive the corruptions of this world and deliver upon it an inverse of the negativity it so often yields. Orion feels the world like few others can."
After the sprawling 4lp Lucifer Rising Suite box set on Ajna reviewed here a while back, comes yet another awesome archival treasure trove of psychedelic sounds from Bobby Beausoleil, this one focused on demos and unreleased recordings from his Orkustra, a sort of Eastern style psychedelic jazz group he started after a brief stint in an early incarnation of Love with Arthur Lee.
Beausoleil was a friend and one time bandmate of Manson (not a member of the Manson family as is commonly thought), and is currently incarcerated, not for the 'Manson Murders' though, he was in fact arrested 3 days before that infamous killing spree for killing Gary Hinman after a botched drug sale. He spent time on Death Row but his sentence was eventually commuted to life in prison, which is where he has spent the last 40 years. Much of that making music.
The Orkustra however came well before, when Beausoleil was just a young hippie who headed to California looking for love and drugs and sex, and who discovered music as a gateway to another plane, to spiritual salvation.
The Orkustra never released a proper record, so this 2lp collects many of the demos and rehearsals, most unreleased, and thus the sound quality varies, the record opener, "Bousaki Blues Experiment" features lots of drop outs where the tape had obviously been damaged, but somehow that only adds to the mood and mysticism of the recording. That track already sounds a bit like a spacier, druggier Dirty Three, but with the strange garbled bits of tape damage, it sounds like some unearthed chunk of sonic mystery. The sound of the Orkustra is actually quite varied, from gamelan like grooves, to propulsive psychedelic rock, to tripped out fusiony free jazz, a definite Eastern vibe running through much of the music. "Flash Gordon" sounds almost big band, but with strange buzzing melodies, and woozy electric guitars. "Punjab's Barber" sounds like it could have been plucked off of some Sublime Frequencies compilation, and in fact, many of the tracks here, due in part to the songs, but also the recordings, sound like genuine artifacts of lost world music. "Freeform Improvisation (While Watching An Experimental Underground Film" is a murky muddy, spaced out krautrock workout, that sounds like it could just as soon be some current band getting all retro and lo-fi. Woozy, mesmerizing, drone-y, space-y and totally psychedelic. The literally titled "Flute Player Audition" has the titular flutist adding flurries and trills to the bands, warm and languorous garage groove. The record finishes with a practice version of "Gypsy Odyssey", a sprawling 12 minutes slow burning raga infused drone jam, murky and lo-fi, the bass throbbing and pulsing, the guitars unfurled in sheets of blurred sound that slowly coalesce into riffs, plenty of buzz and rumble and in-the-red blown out psychedelic blur, a space jam, that most bands today would kill to replicate.
Incredible stuff. And as with all Mexican Summer stuff, they pull out all the stops, gorgeous thick full color gatefold jacket, thick thick vinyl, download card, it is on the pricey side, as seems to be the case with Mexican Summer releases, but in this instance, it definitely seems worth it. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
No more Loftus, but there's still Orso and here's a new disc from the same Califone/Red Red Meat Chicago "banjocore" nexus...yay.
Here's the third full length from Chicago's sleepy chamber folksters oRSo. M.D.A.B.A.T.A.B.T.E. is loosely filled with gentle rain droplet-y plink-plunks from the guitar and banjo, and fleshed out with some strings and saxophone. It's much more even keeled and conventionally melodic than their previous albums, although those moments that sound like a pit orchestra tuning up still surface here and there. Lead singer Phil Spirito (ex-Rex) has a voice that immediately strikes you as warmly familiar and comforting -- sort of a cross between the varied lilts of Wayne Coyne, Will Oldham, Vic Chesnutt and Dean Wareham. Cup initially thought the sixth song "Loaded For Bear" was a cover of "Jennifer" from Faust's classic album IV, but it isn't. However, at the very least the opening few lines of each verses do make you wonder if it was an inspiration (either conscious or subconscious) for the song and possibly the album as a whole.
We're probably not the first to say it, but doom metal band Orthodox are *anything but* orthodox on their second offering for the Southern Lord label. Spanish sludge lords with a psychedelic bent, Orthodox's 2006 debut album Gran Poder was a major sensation among connoisseurs of the heavy, being selected as an Album Of The Month on Julian Cope's Head Heritage website, in part for its pagan-Catholic imagery, in part for its monolithic heaviness. What about eagerly anticipated album number two? Though we think it's great, and most likely Mr. Cope does too, this new one will no doubt cause some consternation among the less open minded of doom fanatics, as it's got a lot more going on that sheer sludge-ry. Not that Gran Poder wasn't an eccentric effort either, but this one's extremely so. Extremely eccentric, and eclectic, indeed.
The first track, "Con Sangre De Quien Te Ofenda" could easily be mistaken for a moody piece of instrumental avant-jazz, with that wide-open-desert-spaces feel of Hex-era Earth, baroquely adorned with a shuffling, dramatic drum solo and an almost-joyous improv-blowing session for trumpet and other horns. It actually brings back fond memories of the late great metallic math-rockers Engine Kid, the band that SUNNO))) member and Southern Lord label boss Greg Anderson used to play in back in the day, like when they would get jazzy like Iceburn and cover Coltrane... Minus the horns, that disjointed, free-jazz vibe continues on the second track, the nine-minute "Mesto, Rigido E Ceremoniale", though they heavy it up quite a bit. Imagine a slowed-down, fractured Black Flag instrumental, like something from The Process Of Weeding Out made more abstract, slower and heavier. Entering into the territory of defunct Dutch instro-metallers Gore here! With the third song, though, vocals finally enter the mix, weirdly distressed and wailing chant-like, and the riffing gets more intensely metallic, rigidly clawing through a miasma of chaotic, psychedelic, paranoid jamming. That one, "Solemne Triduo", makes us think of Om mixed with Los Natas at their strangest. And then, just when things are getting loudest and most insane, the album takes an abrupt shift into the quietly windswept, acoustically strummed "Amancer En Puerta Oscura" which flows immediately into the ominous "Puerta Osario", with stark repeated chords, and cruelly plinking piano keys. Though just two minutes minutes long, this is no brief detour like the piano interlude heard in the middle of Gran Poder, as it seamlessly segues into the sedated, suspenseful "Templos" that pulsates for 15 minutes in an darkened dreamworld of eerie clarinet, shimmering cymbals, slow-paced percussion, sparsely echoing bass, sheer moody atmosphere... It's a kind of creeping chamber music, that could be the score from some Italian horror soundtrack, or the sinister cousin to the epic tracks on Circle's mellow and mesmeric Miljard, mixed maybe with the 20th Century style stuff Ghost was experimenting with on their last album, In Stormy Nights.
The seventh and final track, "Parte II. Apogeum", then hits like a ton of bricks, massive doom-riff guitars smashing all before it, as if to say, you want ye olde DOOOOOOM? You got it! This song should shut up any complainers who didn't entirely get what was going on before, it's a doozy of a doom number all right, complete with even frenzied, metallic, acid-fried guitar soloing, and insanely effected alien Ozzy vocals. Closest comparisons would be to Thrones, and Yob and/or Middian, at their most claustrophobically crushing. It's like Orthodox wanted to wrap the album up with one song that in 7 minutes, 54 seconds would utterly satisfy anyone wanting Gran Poder Part II, for whom some of the more mystifying, weirdly proggy stuff elsewhere on this album could just be a bonus. Of course for us it's all good.
Recommended to all unorthodox doom lovers! Art and design by Seldon Hunt, by the way, and as long as we're dropping his name, here's some other names that we should have worked into the review somehow, as we think fans of the following might quite like this: Boris, Comets On Fire, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Ennio Morricone, Dragonauta...
At last!! It's been a while since we last caught up with entirely UN-orthodox Spanish dooooooooooom mongers Orthodox. Yeah, doom with so many o's that we're surprised they had any left for the 3 in their name. But also doom that takes a lot of strange twists and turns into the furthest far out zones of the genre.
This band's first two outstanding albums, Gran Poder and Amanecer En Puerta Oscura, were issued stateside by Southern Lord back in 2007. Now, six years later, we have the Spanish release of the their fourth opus, Baal. (Their third album, 2009's Sentencia was MIA at aQ, but maybe we'll be able to get some now that we tracked down an import supplier for this new one.) Billed as a return to their heavy doom Gran Poder roots, after the psychedelic, almost jazz-like experimentation of the last couple, this IS hellishly heavy, though still quite avant-garde, as well.
Lead off instrumental track "Alto Padre", despite its deep distorted low-end, is definitely more psych than doom, in fact... skittering percussive pitter-patter and chiming guitars conjure a hazy, mellow mood. It's a woozy ritual that could easily appeal to Six Organs Of Admittance fans, for instance. But then the band brings the doom hammer down, big time, on the next song, "Taurus", quite a surprise for some of us here who didn't know what we were listening to... Crushing, crashing chords and peals of feedback begin the jagged death march that continues over Baal's remaining four tracks. You don't listen to this for conventional "songishness", nor really even for riffs (though there are RIFFS), more for the totality of the experience of Orthodox's tectonic rumble and psychedelic sickness... It's a combo of lumbering sludge bulldozing, twisted gnarled leads, and alien, underwatery atmospheres. And vocals - with a weird, wavering effect on 'em, very much like OM meets YOB, intoning grim and desperate chant. With those vocals, one starts to think about the band inhaling from a balloon filled with, not helium, but some other, psychotropic gas... actually maybe not sucking on the balloon, but being sucked INTO it, the entire band inhabiting some impossible, drug-filled inner space. Which also sounds like it could be deep under the earth. Soon you'll be trapped there too, possessed by the churning metallic attacks, spacious drones, and proggy freakouts found throughout the demonic Baal...
The grande finale, 14 minute "Abrase Le Tierra" sums it up, explosions of distortion detonating over drum clatter and organ drone, then the guitarist goes offffff and it's a doomed out Earthless... before a wild, heavily effected finish. Imagine a mix of Yob, Gallhammer, Earth, and even Comets On Fire, here!
If the well-used terms psychedelic and heavy, which have been cited umpteen thousand times on this list alone, have any relevance to your listening habits, especially at their extremes, then we suggest you get this Orthodox album (and The Wounded Kings also this list, and the Elder reviewed last time, too, for that matter, if you haven't already), you'll be happy you did!
All the doom (and ultra doooooooOOOOOoooooom) lovers here at aQ agree, idiosyncratic Spanish outfit Orthodox is one of our faves, and have been pretty much ever since their 2006 debut, Gran Poder. Over their several albums since, they've pushed the doom envelope in various extreme and extremely strange directions, indulging all sorts of influences, but even when their predilection for sometimes avant-garde, proggy, jazzy, acoustic weirdness takes over, and they start sounding like a cross between Yob and Six Organs Of Admittance playing free jazz, they still ruled - and ultimately remained rooted in old school doom metal too, with a powerful, crushing, heavier-than-thou RIFF always lurking around even the most confusional of corners of their freaky ceremonial sounding compositions.
We hope you're as big of fans of Orthodox as we are, 'cause we're excited to have this new, double cd rare tracks collection from 'em. Of course it's all over the place, from covers of Venom and Sabbath to full on improv sessions, and it's all pretty killer. There's cuts from 7"s and compilations and early cassette demos, plus the bonus tracks from the Southern Lord vinyl edition of Gran Poder (those covers), and several previously unreleased songs as well, all remastered. Obviously for fans first and foremost, but heck if you started your Orthodox experience here you'd be well equipped (and we expect, eager) to delve into the rest of their catalog.
Things start off with mantric, OM-ish "Matse Avatar", the A side of a 7" originally released on the Doomentia label. Great lyrics, you can read 'em in the booklet - one line mentions an "old lady mermaid" who "sings like Geddy Lee". The B side comes next, then their version of Venom's "Genocide", an appropriately aggro and off the rails, bass heavy black metal blast. That's followed by the other cover, wherein Orthodox take one of the first, if not thee first, doom songs ever, "Black Sabbath", and come close to making it their own, being ultra fuzzed out & fucked with, and also seriously psychotic in the vocal dep't.; we'd thought we'd heard that song, and covers of that song, way too many times, but we're willing to spin this Orthodox version again and again. Weirdly, it somehow reminds us of Japanese underground '80s prog act YBO2, if that means anything to you or yours. Then there's the 18+ minute "Heritage", taken from the Four Burials 4-way split, a beautiful and haunting example of psychedelic slowcore "headphone doom", as we described it in our review of that disc. The three previously unreleased tracks are particularly interesting as well, one's from a collaboration with a flamenco dancer - but for sure isn't flamenco music, with its explosive distortion detonations and skittery soundscapes. The other two are intense noisy improvs, and the rather enlightening track-by-track commentary in the cd booklet from the band members reveals that they were inspired by Black Flag and Japanese psych like Mainliner and Keiji Haino, yup, we might have guessed. John Coltrane and, uh-huh, Rush are other influences mentioned here and there. In fact, one of the improvs is titled "Japan Rush", ok!!
Disc two is all lengthy tracks from live rehearsals, originally released on demo tapes, definitely raw but with tons of atmosphere, two of 'em being the first Orthodox recordings ever from back in 2005, demonstrating that they dwelled in "the void" from the very beginning, cult stuff for sure, and HEAVY - listen to these early versions of songs from their debut studio album and get even deeper into their eccentric, unhinged doooooom vibe. The demo track from Sentencia, "Ascension", shows how much changed in a couple years, the band even more eccentric, their doom harder to define.
All in all, essential to anyone who really appreciates Orthodox, and well worth checking out if you're into adventurous doom in general, from Cathedral to SUNNO))), Khanate to Boris, OM to Los Natas... (We're not sure if Rush fans will dig, but they could give it a try too.)
DOOM. As per AQ tradition, we should throw some extra 'O's in there just to indicate just how doomy this is -- DOOOOOOooooooooOOOM! Not to get sidetracked, but Doom might be the only musical genre that you can deliberately misspell to indicate extra enthusiasm for whatever example of said genre you're describing. RRRRap doesn't work. Nor would you say Woooorld Music. And adding extra 'o's to Pop is a just bad idea, unless you're talking about pop you don't like. But doom, being all about being slow and low, just gets doomier when you exaggerate the spelling into doooooooooooom. The point of all this? That the debut disc from Spanish doom band Orthodox, needs, like, exponential 'o's to really get at its doominess.
Recently and rightly hailed as an Album Of The Month on Julian Cope's psychedelic drone/doom/druid rock lovin' website Head Heritage, Orthodox's Gran Poder ("Great Power") consists of three looong tracks of gloomy, glacial heaviness mixed with more chaotically rockin' parts, with one brief piano-laced interlude seperating tracks two and three. These crushing compositions are almost symphonically grand, an often exceedingly slow grind of eternally doomed drone like Earth or SUNNO))), sometimes speeding up to rock out psychedelically in the style of Argentina's Los Natas, graced with heavily tremelo-laden vocals or utterly spaced out ambience that make us think of Thrones and Yob.
Throughout this sludgey stoner soundscape, you'll hear feedback wailing like lamenting lost souls, the rumbling drum battery either nervously dodging the lugubrous riffs as they fall from the sky, or pounding in unison with the guitar and bass, sounding like the gates of an abandoned ancient cavernous cathedral slamming shut... over and over again.
We imported a whole bunch of these direct from the label in Spain because we're pretty sure that fans of the likes of Corrupted (who also sing in Spanish, after all) and Yob and Sleep and UFOmammut and all the other extra-o's deservin' dooooooOOOOoom bands that we love would want this! And if for some reason you need further convincing, please look up Julian Cope's review on his site, where he references Flower Travellin' Band's Satori and the Mediterranean paganistic roots of Catholic ritual and "Rumble" by Link Wray and much much more, his incredibly enthusiastic review almost a call to arms for doom fanatics... and he also includes cool pictures of the black-robed band members he took on a trip to their land!
Newst release from the super prolific, ultra complex, totally hyphenated (you know...avant-thrash-free-jazz-math-rock) grinding, sort-of metallic, sort-of free jazz, totally inspiring, absolutely irritating, noodle-riffic instrumental duo from New Jersey. Featuring Mick Barr from AQ faves Crom Tech, Orthrelm, continue on in the same direction, making mind bogglingly complicated progmetalfreejazz with high end guitar and splattery drumming in concise, one minute-ish bursts. Think the Ruins and Pig Destroyer and Albert Ayler all playing different versions of the same songs at THE SAME TIME. This certainly falls under the heading: DIFFICULT. And Orthrelm is definitely the kind of band that separates the men from the boys, or the geeks from the SUPER geeks, or the people who love music that annoys the fuck out of most people on earth and those that don't. You've been warned!
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Second release from former Crom-Tech guitarist Mick Barr and Josh Blair (of ABCS) following their debut on Tolotta. Ninety-nine tracks fly by at a warp speed twelve-and-a-half minutes. Naked City meets Yngwie Malmsteen gone hardcore pretty much sums it up.
Ok, we were wrong back on AQ-L 117 when we said that former Crom Tech guitarist Mick Barr's Octis project was "the polar opposite" of his other band, Orthrelm. For some reason we had gotten the idea that while Octis specializes in short, fast, squiggly guitar
Orthrelm spells...? Not relief from headache, that's for sure! Notorious guitarist Mick Barr (ex-Crom Tech, and of Octis and Flying Luttenbachers infamy also) and drummer Josh Blair continue their assault on musical sanity with Ov, newly released by Mike Patton's envelope-pushing Ipecac label. Ov leaves the envelope pretty much pushed beyond what most people can take -- it will be quite the endurance test for some, but pure bliss for a select few. By the end of this review you should know who you are if you don't already (owning other records involving Barr is one clue).
Way back when we reviewed Orthrelm's debut ep Iorxhscimtor, we admitted that we'd been under the mistaken impression that Orthrelm was supposed to be "some sort of droney, doomy thing with super-long songs". It wasn't... but now it is. Sort of. Unlike previous Orthrelm releases (and Barr's other project Octis), Ov isn't about a million trebly tracks of stop-start skronk. No, here the duo's frenetic drumming and insidious ADD guitar squiggle are harnessed into a single, 45 minute long track of intense, almost metallic, repetitive minimalism. A high-pitched, note-dense, trance-inducing (maybe seizures too?), insectoid symphony that slowly shifts gears and builds tension but offers little respite or resolution until its 45 minutes are up or your ears/speakers/the disc iself shatters from the stress. Yet, if you can take it, Ov's continuous rumble of drums and precision frenzies of tinny guitar shred also create a thing of static, maddening beauty. I think...or maybe I've lost it. Am I crazy when I think that some of the feedbackier parts remind me of moments of the Boredoms' Super Ae? Or that this is not entirely unlike something that Boris or SUNNO))) would do... but with a million times more emphasis on the high end, and the notion of motion on the micro if not macro level??
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